


Death is Easy

by Romiress



Category: Flashpoint (Comics)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Gore, Human Sacrifice, No Sexual Content, POV Multiple, Religious Elements, Temporary Character Death, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-28 01:48:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20056054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romiress/pseuds/Romiress
Summary: A young Jason Todd, years before the events of Flashpoint, has an encounter with the divine.---Written for the Jay x Jay challenge on Tumblr.





	Death is Easy

Jason knows that if Brother Blood wanted it to, it could be painless. He knows he has that power. That he can take the pain away. But he doesn't.

Instead it hurts. It hurts more than anything he's ever experienced before. He'd known dying would hurt, but he at least thought it would be  _ quick, _ and there's nothing quick about this. Every part of him is tied down until he can't move at all.

Brother Blood has flayed him. Brother Blood has  _ hurt _ him. He says that it's an honor, but with every successive bit of skin peeled away from his torso it feels less like an honor and more like torture. With every bit of him cut away, it feels less like a glorious end and more like something truly horrible.

With every smile from Brother Blood looming above him, it feels more like something that the other man is doing for  _ fun. _

So when the knife finally comes out—the big ceremonial one that Jason's seen him use a million times—he wants to breathe a sigh of relief. He can't, because it feels like his lungs are on fire, but he  _ wants _ to with every fibre of his being. The knife is escape. The knife is the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

But Brother Blood won't even make that quick. The pain is too intense for Jason to even feel the knife's tip digging in just above his navel. He doesn't feel it until it's already up above his sternum.

He's dying. He prays he's dying to a god he no longer believes in, because dying would make the pain stop. Dying would make everything stop. He can barely process the frantic chanting over his head, can't process anything outside the pain.

Something inside him  _ moves. _ It moves in a way that body parts should absolutely not be moving. He can feel his organs shifting around and knows with absolute certainty that he shouldn't be able to  _ feel _ that, but he can't even scream because Brother Blood made sure to severe his vocal cords right at the very start.

His vision goes white as the thing inside him starts to move, and Brother Blood reaches forward, cracking his ribs open. He should be dead. He doesn't understand how he's not dead, he doesn't understand how he's still even half as awake as he is. He doesn't want to be. He desperately wants to be dead and he can't even get that.

Nothing in life has ever been kind to him, and death is turning out to be no different.

Jason stays conscious just long enough to see something beautiful burst out of his torso, and then he finally, mercifully dies.

* * *

Of all the sacrifices he's performed, this is the most amazing. There's a thrumming in the air as he skins the boy, a sense of  _ power _ that permeates the air. He chants in the old tongue, in a language not spoken by mortal lips for thousands of years, and draws his fingers through the blood pooling on the altar. He drags bloody fingertips across the boys bare flesh, drawing sigils to ease the transition.

The boy is still awake. He's still awake because Brother Blood  _ wants _ him to be awake, because every bit of pain and suffering only helps the process. His eyes roll back into his head as his entire body spasms, and when Brother Blood begins to finally cut him open, the boy makes the smallest whimper of approval, the best he can manage with his vocal cords cut.

The taste in the air becomes something sharp and metallic, heavy on his tongue, and he watches in fascination as the boys chest flexes as if something inside him is trying to push its way out. He's quick to help, moving forward and getting to work. He cracks the boys ribs open the way he would to get at his heart, but he pulls back when his organs flex and heave, barely managing to contain whatever is using him as a pathway.

The thing emerges all at once, tearing Its way through his sacrifice as the boy finally dies on the altar. It is large, easily eight or nine feet tall, and even soaked with Blood he knows that It is inhumanly beautiful.

His eyes start to burn as he looks upon It. The massive curling horns rising from It's forehead. The wings, spreading out, impossibly large in such a small space. The glowing, violently white eyes. It knows everything he is, everything he ever was, and It has found him wanting.

Brother Blood falls to his knees, in awe of his creation.

But no, even that isn't right. He could never have made something so perfect.

It steps clear of the body It emerged from, turning towards him, and he hears Its voice. It does not have a mouth, but Brother blood can still hear It echoing in his brain. Tears come to his eyes, unable to tear his eyes away as It approaches, looming over him.

_ You will do,  _ It says in a voice that is not a voice, the air thrumming with the  _ feeling _ of it.  _ His work is not yet finished. _

Every part of Brother Blood's body screams in agony all at once. The pain is worse than anything he's ever felt, and blood begins to force itself from every opening on his body. He shudders, falling to the ground, and even then he is unable to tear his eyes away from the impossibly beautiful thing before him.

Brother Blood dies in a pool of his own blood, unable to understand what he's even looking at.

* * *

Jason wakes.

He should not wake. He should be dead. There's no happy blur of sleep, only the hard, sharp memory and the pain.

It hurts. Every part of him hurts. He can't make any noise but he wants to  _ scream, _ because everything hurts and everything feels horribly, horribly wrong.

Jason opens his eyes and stares up at something that should not exist. It is not a person in any sense of the word. It's like a hole torn in space, an  _ outline _ of a living thing, and the only feature Jason can get a clear understanding of is the eyes.

The eyes stare down at him, perfectly white like two miniature suns.

He doesn't understand how he's alive.

_ You are alive by my will, _ the thing says in a voice that does not make a sound. It knows what he's thinking. He can feel it there, inside his head. He can have no secrets from it.

_ You are good, _ it says.  _ But life has been cruel to you. _

The thing reaches out with something that might have been a hand or might simply have been a tendril and touches his heart in the most literal sense possible. Jason feels it  _ beat, _ and he doesn't understand how he is awake when it wasn't beating before. He doesn't understand anything.

_ We are not for you to understand, _ it says.  _ But you will know us. _

The thing above him ripples, shifting and changing even as Jason watches. The hazy outline slowly shifts, sharpening as it becomes more solid and less of an impression in physical space. Second by second, it becomes something closer to human. Something that doesn't feel like a hot poker being shoved into his  _ soul, _ something that doesn't make his brain itch.

It's becoming  _ him,  _ he realizes. His features. His body.

_ Yes, _ it tells him.  _ We are the same now. _

But they are not the same. They are the same in a way that only something so impossibly inhuman could consider the same. No one would mistake them for one another, even if they have the same bone structure. Even if they have the same dark hair. The eyes are still there, glowing and impossibly white, and the thing above him is so impossibly perfect that even with its eyes closed, no one would ever think that the being above him was a gutter rat from the wrong side of Gotham. Its skin is flawless, completely without imperfection, and he's missing the multitude of scars that Jason has grown used to.

_ No, _ it says.  _ You are good. Life has simply been cruel. _

It swipes its fingers across his forehead, brushing the hair from his eyes, and Jason realizes that his eyes are watering. Nothing makes sense. He doesn't understand any of it. But the gesture is comforting despite the horror of the situation.

The thing drags its fingers down the side of his face, down to his throat, and Jason  _ knows _ that his throat is stitching itself together, repairing the damage that was inflicted almost an hour earlier.

"What are you?" Jason croaks, because that's what he needs to know. That's what he needs to  _ understand. _ His torso is still torn open and his skin is still peeled off and his heart is  _ visible to the air _ and yet he's still alive, and the pain is ebbing away with every little touch. It shouldn't be. He should be unconscious from the agony.

_ You are my salvation, _ it says in the voice-that-isn't-a-voice.  _ You will help me. _

"I don't know if I can," he says. Maybe it's the wrong thing to say. Maybe he should be saying  _ yes, absolutely, I'll help you _ to the impossible, inhuman thing that has taken his shape. But he can't lie to it. He can't keep secrets from it, and how could he expect himself to lie?

_ You will help me, _ it says again.

"I'll help you," Jason says, "if I can."

_ Good. _

It leans down, pressing a kiss to Jason's forehead, and he feels his eyes water, tears coming unbidden. He doesn't know what it is, but he knows, in a strange way, that it is  _ good. _ That it wants to help. He just doesn't know how it can fix things.

_ All things are possible. _

The thing picks him up, cradling Jason's broken body in its arms. Only once it has settled down on the edge of the altar does it begin its work, press a hand into his chest cavity. Jason can't see it, but he can  _ feel _ it as the hand dances across all the damage Brother Blood has done.

Jason can also feel it undoing the damage. He can feel his body starting to repair itself, the damage slowly becoming undone, and the last of the pain ebbing away.

_ You are good, _ the thing says to him.  _ So you will be good to others. You will help me earn my redemption, bit by bit. _

He knows that he would do anything it wanted, curled up in its arms. That anything it asked of him would not be too much. But what it asks for is nothing: Warmth and kindness and goodwill towards his fellow man.  _ That _ is what it wants.

That is what Jason is so happy to give.

The thing holds him tight, pressing a kiss to the top of his head, and Jason at last falls asleep, safe in its arms.

* * *

Jason barely remembers the next few days. They blur together, a flurry of events that he seems barely aware of. The police. The hospital. The confusion and alarm as the entire cult is rooted out and arrested. He cannot explain how he lived, so he is happy that they do not ask.

He isn't sure what he would have said, anyway.

He has no place to go, so they send him to a shelter, and it's there he finds his calling. He volunteers for a work team, helping collect trash from a public park. Afterwards, they take them to a church—a  _ real _ church, not the thing that Brother Blood called one—and make sure they all get fed.

Jason feels at home there. He feels the same warmth there as he did on the day he died, the same sense of  _ welcome. _

He speaks to the priest and is invited to stay. They give him a room near the back and work to do, and it's only once he's there, staring into the mirror, that he understands.

His skin is perfect and unmarred, every scar erased. He is healthy. The years of malnutrition no longer have any hold on him.

The only sign of anything strange is the shock of pure white on his brow, a sign he's been touched by something otherworldly.

He does as it wished him to, and he hopes that it's enough to show his gratitude for what it did for him.


End file.
